Helen Resurrects, Praying for Night & Brownskin Bills

Poetry Ava Rahimpour

Helen Resurrects

I’d like to be a pop-up dummy

named Helen, with pearls I can clutch

if I ever think my son is on drugs.

I’d like to be despised and love unconditionally

and resuscitate all the other dummies with a breath

of the life I always wanted for myself.

I’ll date a high school biology teacher who does me

in his lab coat and treats me like his favourite beaker,

a serene witness to the Big Bang of teenage thanklessness

breaking the frame in my portrait-perfect home.

He’ll be a man who understands

that life is just cycles: the heat

will be cooled, the mess will be tidied,

the next thing that socks me won’t keep me down.

He understands that I will resurrect.

Praying for Night

If only I could sleep

through every slice of night and a morsel of the day

without the racket of birds or ravenous meows.

I wouldn’t want a glimpse of the moon or the sun ramping

up or down or side to side, pampered

by the same clouds that used to wait to cry with me.

I’d like the galaxy warmed in my mug before bed,

stars swirling in the inky tea like heavy cream.

I’d like my pick of a barista from the nine circles of hell

and a cream puff of an angel to bake me some pastries

from one of those nine holy spheres. Great heavens,

God wouldn’t miss them a bit.

The man juggles the spheres and commands the circles with his hips

like they’re light-up hula hoops, which works wonders for his figure.

I watch him instead of counting sheep, praying for the night

to take me under its wing and stroke me with its claws

and devour me whole, the way felines do fowls.

Brownskin Bills

Moha’s my short friend, short for Mohammad

cause he’s a Sunni Jordanian. You gifted him

a tomato plant. Can I get one/two, you think?

He said they were juicy, sweet,

easy as Islam to slurp. Best eaten on snow.

What a Sunni thing to say, right?

For sure, for Shia. Tomato, tomato.

I’m too Zoroastrian for that.

You’re too old, too white, baking brownies,

telling the story of busting your knee while

curling with your all-Canadian club. So

you know how to sweep a fille off her feet

with that corn broom grip? I’ve noticed

the way you hold the gearstick.

So intimate.

Like melting

chopped ice

on my tongue.

You don’t exist on camera which

is totally fine with me. We can film

the tomato plants and brownie squares

stuffed in my mouth, teethy Tupperware

chewing on straw money, scraping off frosting,

gurgling bitter salt till my throat falls off.

Moha said you’ll catch it for no extra charge,

you’re just in charge of our sleepless nights.

He and I, we’ve agreed: our brownskin bills

are all yours whenever you need them.

Ava Rahimpour lives in Waterdown, Ontario. She enjoys reading, writing, and listening to songs on replay until they're unbearable. One day, she hopes to make it as a full-time author so she can invest her spoils into noise-cancellation technology—and flat whites.

Helen Resurrects, Praying for Night & Brownskin Bills

Poetry Ava Rahimpour